THE WILD GARDEN. 185 
The wild garden is bounded by snow-banks, the heaping drift 
of November on the one hand, and the thawing ice of March on 
the other, and the hardy hepatica, witch-hazel, and chickweed 
open and close the floral season. 
But in paying our tribute to the exceptional vigor of these 
plants, we are entirely forgetting a noted group which hold the 
honors for hardihood. 
Did the “ Appalachian” climber: ever stop to think what our 
mountain summits would be without the heath? True, we have 
none of the heather that impurples the Highland fells of Great 
Britain, but that foreign type is replaced with us by other species 
that paint our June mountain ranges with beauty; inspiring mis- 
sionaries whose mission it is to soften the grim austerity of the 
crags, to reclaim the bleak desert and reconcile the earth and sky 
—in short, to carry the garden heavenward. It would indeed be 
like taking the entire garment from the granite backs of the 
White Hills were we to withdraw the heath-blooms. How they 
tuft and pillow the crags and spurs! What a troop of them, 
too! Rhododendrons and azaleas, with their purple glow flood- 
ing the chaparral; bilberries of several kinds making green many 
a chink and cranny among the rocks; the moss-like cassiope with 
its nodding bells; dwarf blueberries and cranberries, and cow- 
berries with their deep red and tonic acid fruit. The pretty yel- 
low phyllodoce is here, and the ledum with its leaves backed with 
their woollen blanket carefully hemmed at its edges, and various 
others. 
Always fresh and green, their blossoms ruddy with the blast 
or drenched with the flying, freezing scud, exposed to the fiercest 
storms, even incased in solid ice or buried deep for months be- 
neath mountainous depths of snow, they dwell in peace, and in 
abiding faith expand their blossom-buds for spring. Do they not 
speak to us? 
“Oh, lovely is the rose!” who, indeed, shall challenge its beau- 
ty? This nodding “Mermet” in the beam of sunlight within 
the conservatory, for instance. What lush life and sensuous con- 
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